


After Life

by meyari



Category: Smallville
Genre: Afterlife, Blood, M/M, Purgatory, Spooky, Surreal, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-27
Updated: 2011-09-27
Packaged: 2017-10-24 02:39:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meyari/pseuds/meyari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lex wasn't sure what happened to him and the mansion but Clark insisted that they have guests coming so he supposed that he would just have to clean up the mess. If only Alexander weren't making it worse at every turn…</p>
            </blockquote>





	After Life

"You haven't seen my shoes anywhere, have you?" Lex asked as he carefully picked his way through the broken glass littering the hallway intersection.

"No," Clark replied. "Sorry."

He calmly walked through the glass, letting it crunch under his feet. Lex thought that it was Clark in front of him. It looked like Clark, sounded like Clark but there was something so strange about him. His eyes were darker, bluer than the familiar green. His hair was swept back from his forehead in a style that looked forebodingly similar to Lionel's old hair styles.

A piece of glass cut Lex's bare foot by his pinky toe despite all his care in picking his way through them. He winced, looked at Clark and then sighed because Clark was waiting impatiently by the door to his office. Lex swallowed and brushed his hands down his shirt. They shook as they passed over the blood stains he'd been unable to get out. His pants had been so badly torn by Alexander's last attack that Lex had left them behind upstairs rather than continue wearing them.

"Maybe some different clothes?" Lex asked without much hope.

"We don't have time for that, Lex," Clark said and frowned at him as if he was being deliberately difficult. "Our guests will be here soon. We have to clean up the office at least."

"Sorry," Lex said. "I just hate looking less than my best."

Of course, what he really hated was wandering around in a blood-stained shirt, tattered silk boxers and bare feet but Alexander had made it impossible for Lex to do anything else. Clark's face slid into a smile that probably should have looked comforting and familiar. Instead it made Lex's stomach turn with sheer nervousness. That couldn't be Clark. No matter how much it looked like Clark, it just couldn't be him. Lex started to back away from him but a piece of glass cut his heel, startling him out of the sudden burst of panic.

"Come on, they'll be here soon," Clark insisted.

"I'm coming," Lex said.

He made his way through the last bit of glass to Clark's side. The smile was still strange and distant but Lex couldn't help but feel better standing closer to Clark. No matter how strange things were right now, Clark always protected him. Lex looked behind him, worried that Alexander would show up but Clark's hand settled onto his shoulder. It felt like ice and suddenly Clark smelled like mold, moist dirt, things that belonged underground.

"We need to clean up," Clark repeated. Lex's shirt turned damp and moldy under his hand. "It looks like the office is a mess too."

His office was a disaster area. The windows had been smashed from the outside given that the glass was scattered all over the floor. There should be moonlight coming through those broken windows but nothing came in. They were blank black eyes staring down at Lex and Clark. His desk had been smashed too and the pool table had been overturned and flung into a corner as if an angry Meta had gotten annoyed at it. Even the fire that he always kept in the fireplace was out. Lex shivered.

"Can we start the fireplace?" Lex asked as he pushed past Clark and into the trashed room. All of his books had been ripped off the shelves and flung around the room. "It's cold in here."

"The windows are broken," Clark commented entirely too calmly. "Of course it's cold."

Lex nodded at that. He started picking up the books, putting them back on the shelves. It took several of them before Lex realized that all of the books had empty pages. The writing was gone, leaving nothing but blankness behind.

"They're not my books," Lex said. His voice shook but then his hands were shaking too. Something was so very wrong. "They're blank, empty."

"Does it matter if there's writing in them, Lex?" Clark asked and now his voice was so very distant, so very alien. "You never did anything with the wisdom that they held anyway."

When he turned to look at Clark in shock, Lex couldn't see his face. It was hidden by shadows. Clark's eyes glowed red but that wasn't Clark. It couldn't be. He wasn't tall enough and the shoulders weren't wide enough. Lex gulped and stood, clutching two of the empty books in his hand.

"Alexander," Lex said as he wondered if he could ease his way to the door and run.

"Lex," his twin replied.

He stepped forward and the blood-red eyes glowed literally enough that Lex could see a bit better in the gloom of his office. Clark lay on the floor, his eyes staring at nothing and glass scattered over his body. A pool of blood had long since dried under his body. The knife in his ribs had flaking bloody handprints on it. Lex was certain that the prints would match Alexander's, his, hands.

"You really think you can do a damn bit of good straightening up in here?" Alexander asked and the sneer was almost a physical attack. "They're going to see how fucked up you are, how fucked up we are. There's no hiding that."

He waved one hand at the destruction in Lex's office. Lex flinched and looked down at the empty book in his left hand. The title had changed from something ornate that he hadn't bothered to read to a single word: 'Run'. The other book's title now read 'Now!'

Lex dropped the books and ran for the door but Alexander was there before him. He backhanded Lex hard enough to knock him across the room and into the puddles of shattered glass under the windows. Bleeding from a dozen new cuts, Lex rolled to his feet just before Alexander smashed his foot into the spot where Lex's head had been.

"You can't escape!" Alexander bellowed as Lex ran for the back door out of the mansion and into the garden. "There is no escape from here, Lex. We're trapped until the end of time!"

The door opened out onto one of the upper hallways instead of the garden. Alexander roared behind Lex as though he was a hungry dragon who'd been denied his prey. Lex slammed the door and ran for the stairs, doing his best to avoid the inevitable broken glass and pottery. He didn't succeed, as always, so he ignored the cuts to his feet, knees and hands as he ran, tripped, got up, ran more, fell, got up again and kept on going. It felt like something from a ghost story instead of something real, something happening to him but the blood was real and the pain so Lex kept on running.

Clark, he had to find Clark, but no, that wouldn't work. Clark was dead. Alexander had killed him. Except that maybe, just maybe that hadn't been Clark at all. Maybe the entity that he'd been following all this time wasn't Clark. Lex seemed to remember Clark 'dying' before since everything had gone so strange.

Yes, Clark had died. Alexander had killed him. But then Alexander had died at least once, only to come back again. The hallway blurred as Lex ran, slipping on his bleeding feet, always trying to escape the roar of his mad, violent other half. It didn't seem possible that he'd be able to escape. Alexander always found him, always beat him. There was no escape from that dark side of his soul, except that Lex wanted so badly for there to be. He had to find a way out of this place, whatever it was.

His flight came to an abrupt end as he encountered the front door of the mansion. He'd never found it before.

"They're almost here," Clark said in his too calm and distant voice.

He was standing right behind Lex. The smell of mold and earth changed into a musty stink that Lex finally recognized as the smell of things long dead. Blood dripped down Lex's shoulders, pooled around his abused feet.

"I'm dead," Lex said in a sudden burst of clarity. "This is the afterlife. I'm in Hell."

"Not yet," Not-Clark said and now he sounded more like Alexander but Lex still didn't turn to look at him. "But soon. Your death will be here soon."

"I'm… between life and death?" Lex asked, more than moderately horrified by that.

"Mmm, close enough," Not-Alexander replied. "When they get here we'll know one way or the other what's going to happen to you."

Lex stared at his palms. They were crisscrossed by cuts, slowly seeping blood but there was a ring on his finger. It looked like a wedding ring or something similar. He slowly turned his hand over so that he could stare at the faintly glowing green stone.

Meteor rock. It was a meteor rock ring.

"This…" Lex paused and stared at the ring so hard that he could swear that the light pulsed in time with his heart. "This is part of why I'm between, isn't it?"

"Yes," the entity that wasn't Clark and wasn't Alexander said. Its voice was devoid of all emotion.

"Can I take it off?" Lex asked, his fingers fiddling with it as he hesitated. "What will happen if I do?"

"They're almost here," the entity said. Its bony hand curled around Lex's shoulder. He could have sworn that a long black sleeve made of tattered fabric brushed against his back but he wasn't going to look. "You might as well wait."

Lex frowned.

"No."

"No?" the entity asked. "'No' what?"

"No more waiting," Lex said as he tugged at the ring, then ripped at it, twisting violently to get the thing off of his finger. "No more lies. No more hurting. No more of this! I want it over with. I'm not waiting anymore!"

It took a violent wrench that made Lex feel like he'd ripped his hand off with the ring. Lex flung it away from him, as far as it would go. The mansion seemed to shudder around him and the entity behind him howled in a voice was more like the howl of the wind during a winter storm than anything living. The door in front of him was the only solid thing.

Lex grabbed the door handle as the world around him faded away. He felt as though he was fading away too. As his feet seemed to dissolve into the nothingness encroaching on him, Lex turned the knob and prayed with all his might that this would work, that he'd finally be free. Life or death was a better choice than this unending horror.

The door opened and light flooded in, wrapping Lex with warmth that almost burned after so long in the cold.

**Author's Note:**

> This one came from a dream that's kept on bugging me several days later so I gave in and wrote it. I think that this counts as my official Halloween story for the year. *shivers* It was also partially written as an entry into 's [DCU Halloween Challenge](http://bradygirl-12.livejournal.com/803998.html) with the prompts black, red, moon/moonlight, ghost stories/legends.


End file.
